Automobile bumpers are disposed at the front and rear of a vehicle body to keep damage to the vehicle body caused by an impact load resulting from a collision or the like to a minimum. As a bumper structure, usually, a bumper member is attached to support parts provided on the vehicle body side, a cushioning member for absorbing an impact is mounted to the bumper member, and a cover member serving as a bumper body is provided on the surface so as to cover the bumper member and the cushioning member (related art JP2008-56011A and JP2008-80922A).
Conventionally, in vehicle collision experiments and the like, a head-on collision has often been assumed. However, it has been revealed that in the actual collision accidents, a collision called an “offset collision”, in which an impact is applied at a position deviating from the front to the right or the left, occurs more frequently than head-on collisions. In a head-on collision, the impact is absorbed by the entirety of the front surface of a vehicle, whereas, in the offset collision, the impact is concentrated on the right or the left of the front surface of the vehicle, so that the vehicle is damaged more heavily. For the recent vehicles, the strength and impact absorption of a vehicle body have frequently been designed assuming an offset collision.
In order to reduce damage caused by an offset collision, it is preferable that the bumper member be extended as far as possible to the outside in the vehicle body width direction.
However, by an increase in the distance of the outside in the vehicle body width direction from the support part in which the bumper member of automobile is attached to the vehicle body, the impact load resistance and the rigidity of the bumper member are reduced. Therefore, the deformation of the outside in the vehicle body width direction of the bumper member caused by an offset collision creates a need for replacing the entirety of the bumper member, which increases the repair cost. Also, in an offset collision, the cushioning member sometimes shifts in the vehicle width direction, and in this case, the inherent collision resisting performance cannot be achieved. Also, since the cover member serving as the bumper body has a curvature, when an attempt is made to extend the bumper member so as to match the curvature of the bumper body, the bending fabrication of bumper member is difficult to do because the bumper body is curved greatly.